Cafe Nouveau At Home

A Year of Supperclubs – January

Cafe Nouveau At Home — Sun, 29 Jan 2012 22:29:36 +0000

Last year I decided that I should experience some of the new and amazing supperclubs popping up locally. Despite having my own underground tearoom I had not actually visited any supperclubs. So an early new year’s resolution was to try and visit a different supperclub each month.

2012 started with a visit to Dinner at the Manor for the Mexican Food Made Simple evening run by Martini Man and Sticky Pinny. And they didn’t disappoint! Amazing food, great company, lovely hosts and a beautiful home – this is what a supperclub is all about.

Cocktail and canapes in the library

The beautiful table and our amuse bouche

Vegetarian tacos

Tamarind and chilli infused belly pork - my favourite

Yummy homemade sorbet

Playing the cork game!

Mexican Flan - missing the forced rhubarb!

Sticky Pinny's award winning cupcakes

I really enjoyed my first supperclub experience and the next 11 have a lot to live up to! Next month I’ll be visting The Crab Apple in Leeds and then March it’s a trip to York to Sara @ St John’s. It’s going to be a great year!

A year in the life of afternoon tea events

Cafe Nouveau At Home — Wed, 11 Jan 2012 20:14:22 +0000

This week it will be a year to the day that I hosted my first afternoon tea event at my underground tea room, Cafe Nouveau at Home.

Over the year I have held 10 different themed afternoon tea events (I took a break in April and August) including a French inspired, a cake and wine matching and a cheese one.

All in all I think they have been a success. Everyone seems to have enjoyed the food and experience and I’ve had quite a few repeat bookings as well as orders for cakes, cupcakes and even an afternoon tea style wedding breakfast.

On a personal note I’ve met some fantastic and very interesting people and I’ve had an opportunity to try new recipes out. So I’d like to thank everyone who has visited Cafe Nouveau in 2011, as without you it would not work!

I’m looking forward to seeing what 2012 will bring and meeting lots more lovely people.

And in case you haven’t been yet, here are some reviews:

Lynn aka Bakelady from The Secret Tea Room: http://bakelady.wordpress.com/2011/02/26/afternoon-tea-at-cafe-nouveau/

Shirley from Chez Shamwari: http://chezshamwari.com/2011/06/11/first-secret-tea-room-experience/

Review by Aspinall Ink: http://whatsonupnorth.co.uk/2011/03/afternoon-delight/

Ms Marmite Lover: http://marmitelover.blogspot.com/2011/05/oop-north.html

Huddersfield Examiner article: http://www.examiner.co.uk/news/local-west-yorkshire-news/2011/04/06/passionate-about-pastries-maybe-you-can-track-down-huddersfield-s-underground-dining-dens-find-out-more-here-86081-28467116/

Why I love January

Cafe Nouveau At Home — Tue, 10 Jan 2012 20:33:38 +0000

I maybe in the minority but I’ve always loved January. You get six days of Christmas at the beginning, the nights start getting lighter bit by bit and I celebrate my birthday on the 31st.

This year I seem to have lots more exciting things to look forward to:

An artisan patisserie course at the Handmade Bakery, Slaithwaite where I’ll be learning how to make croissants and other viennoiserie.
Dinner at the Manor, a West Leeds supperclub, for a Thomasina Miers inspired Mexican feast.
Cafe Nouveau at Home is one year old and we’ll be celebrating with a retro afternoon tea – yes there will even be jelly and ice-cream.
A foodie trip to London with lunch at The Pollen Social Club, wine and cheese at Gordon’s wine bar and afternoon tea at L’Atelier de Joël Robuchon.

It’s going to be a great month!

A royal feast for Three Kings Day

Cafe Nouveau At Home — Fri, 06 Jan 2012 22:56:14 +0000

I normally celebrate Three Kings Day by making a Galette des Rois, a traditional France puff pastry pie filled with frangipane. It has a trinket baked in it and the person that finds it in their portion becomes king for the day. When you buy a Galette des Rois from the bakers in France they even supply a gold crown for the ‘king’ to wear. (They now also make an apple version which I think is even nicer.)

This year I decided to go a bit further and have a full blown Three Kings meal. The ‘royal’ menu was:

Kir Royale

Asparagus (the food of kings) with soft boiled eggs and hollandaise

Wild boar and wild mushroom casserole with duchesse potatoes

Galette des Rois

Enjoying a Kir Royale

Multi tasking with Galette des Rois and Duchesse potatoes

The starter

The main

The lucky portion!

Everyone seemed to enjoy celebrating the last day of Christmas and I think the royal feast will become a yearly event. Now what to do with that half bottle of fizz?!

24 Days of Baking

Cafe Nouveau At Home — Sun, 04 Dec 2011 11:13:21 +0000

Advent is the time of waiting and prepartion for Christmas so this year instead of counting down the days with my usual chocolate filled calendar I thought I’d attempt a 24 days of baking challenge. Each day I’ll be baking something different and will attempt to make them festive in some way.

Here’s the countdown so far:

Day 1: 24 sultana scones

Day 2: Angel cupcakes

Day 3: Speculoos biscuits

Day 4: Festive madeleines

Day 5: Florentines

Day 6: Christmas friands

Day 7: Biscotti

Day 8: Christmas palmiers

Day 9: Christmas eclairs

Day 10: Yule log

Day 11: Ecclefechen tarts

Day 12: Chocolate orange truffles

Day 13: Chocolate fruit flapjacks

Day 14: Exploding star cake

I’ll keep updating the blog and I’ll be adding daily photos to my facebook page. If you have any festive suggestions let me know or start your own 24 days of baking!

Festival of Light 2011

Cafe Nouveau At Home — Fri, 02 Dec 2011 23:53:54 +0000

Well despite the cancellation of the main Festival of Light show tonight we spent a very enjoyable five hours in Huddersfield eating, drinking, listening to live music, visiting the art market and watching street performances. Yes, it was disappointing that the main show couldn’t go ahead but it was great to see so much going off around the town, there was a real buzz eveywhere you went. My friends from further afield (Leeds and Barnsley) had a fantastic night and we will be back again tomorrow for the main show and then the carols and fireworks on Sunday.

Here are a few photos of what we saw and did tonight.

Tulips in the Piazza

St. Peter's Light Garden

A real wonka bar

A gull

Enjoying Bradley's burger and proper chips and Yummy Yorkshire's salted caramel and Christmas cake ice-cream

The lobster

Look North filming

Crosscut Saw playing on King Street

Artist on the wall of the library/art gallery

New Orleans style band

Dancing to Ice Ice Baby

Gossiping over the wall

Stilt walkers in Byram Arcade

A snowman!

Hope you manage to get there over the next couple of days. There’s lots going off!

Apples and more apples

Cafe Nouveau At Home — Sun, 30 Oct 2011 09:05:32 +0000

Yesterday was a bit like an episode from the BBC’s new British Food Revival programme as we spent the day paying homage to the English apple.

It started in the morning with Bramley apples. I was given a bag full a week ago and I have been trying lots of recipes from the Bramley apple website. I decided to try out the apple and walnut scone recipe and soon had willing volunteers to test them. (My parents have a knack of turning up just when something is coming out of the oven.)

Considering both my parents and husband think that a scone isn’t a scone if it doesn’t contain sultanas, they were all quite impressed with the taste.

Apple and walnut scones

The next part of the apple day was to go out foraging. If you live in Huddersfield and want to know where you can go and pick apples follow ‘Udders Orchard Cider on twitter. Thanks to his tip off we found a tree a few streets away and managed to collect half a bag full.

Foraged apples

The purpose of the apple collecting was to have a go at apple pressing which was taking place at the Shepherd’s Boy in Dewsbury as part of their Beer, Cider and Perry Festival. To celebrate cider, Dave from ’Udders Orchard, was doing live demonstrations of the traditional method used to press apples for cider-making.

Dave from 'Udders Orchard at his press

Our little bag of apples wasn’t quite enough for a whole press of apples but a lovely local man, Malcolm, soon turned up with a big box straight from his apple trees in his garden. (His honey, from the bees that pollenate his apple trees, is also worth a mention and we were lucky enough to get a jar to take home.)

Malcolm the apple and honey man

Then the fun began. We sorted, washed, chopped and pressed the apples and soon had a lovely reddish brown glass of juice that tasted amazing – sweet, slightly tart and so fresh.

Sorting the apples before washing them

The apple chopper

The chopped apples

Preparing the cheeses

Pressing the apples

Testing the sugar content

After all that hard work we treated ourselves to a glass of perry and cider in the pub before heading home to make apple crumble – yes the apple theme continued!

It was a great day, really interesting and fun. I hope that Dave will be doing more demonstrations so lots more people can see how it’s done and also get to sample proper apple juice.

The finished product - lovely fresh apple juice

Tea Box Tea Masterclass

Cafe Nouveau At Home — Thu, 27 Oct 2011 14:36:33 +0000

I’d come across Tea Box via twitter in the summer and heard good things about their tea so when I saw that they were doing a tea masterclass I couldn’t resist. Luckily for me the class was scheduled to take place during half-term week which meant hopefully the journey from Huddersfield to Sheffield during the rush hour wouldn’t be too bad and that my husband could come along (yes he’s a teacher and won’t normally go out on a school night!)

We arrived right on time and squeezed ourselves onto a table with two lovely ladies from Sheffield. The event started with afternoon tea – finger sandwiches, scones and macarons. As the event was hosted at the original Fancie shop just off Hunters Bar we also got to try their famous cupcakes. And of course there was a few cups of tea to wash it all down with – guests could chose between Earl Grey and white tea. Not being big fans of Earl Grey both my husband and I opted for the white tea.

Kirsty, who owns Tea Box, then gave us a brief history of tea and how it is made and talked about the main types of tea – green, black, oolong and white.

Then the interesting part began, the tea tasting. Kirsty gave us a tasting sheet for us to complete with our thoughts and descriptions, and we got to sniff and slurp 11 different teas and infusions. There were quite a few unusual infusions and I was pleasantly surprised by how now nice some of them were.

It was also interesting to compare the leaves before they were brewed and after - you can really see the big leaves and flowers after the water has been added.

Of all the ones we tried my favourites were Chinese Jasmine Silver Needle white tea – a pale golden, floral tea that isn’t at all overpowering; Masala Chai which smells of cinnamon but tastes of orange and vanilla; and Fatigue Fighter, a white tea with ginger, lemongrass and ginkgo. Tummy Rub (peppermint, fennel, liquorice and chamomile) and Indian Assam Black were my husband’s favourites.

Conclusions
A really nice evening, some lovely teas and there will definitely be an order for tea for my underground tearoom, Cafe Nouveau at Home. It was also lovely to meet Kirsty too and we managed to find time to talk about our idea for a National Tea Day – watch this space!

About Tea Box
TeaBox started in 2010 by tea lover Kirsty Munro and is a loose leaf tea business based in Sheffield. Their aim is to constantly evolve their tea offering, embracing traditional tea tasting values as well as innovative ‘outside the box’ flavours and combinations. Quality is of the utmost importance to them and to ensure the highest standards, all of the tea is packed and blended by hand. Visit their website to find out more about their range of teas.

Huddersfield Oktoberfest

Cafe Nouveau At Home — Sun, 16 Oct 2011 23:05:37 +0000

This weekend was the Huddersfield Oktoberfest, the annual CAMRA beer festival which for the last few years has been held in the Silk Leisure Centre just at the top of town.

For non CAMRA members it was £3 entry and then a £2 deposit for a glass. You then bought beer tokens which you exchanged for beer meaning that the people on the bar could just concentrate on pouring the beer.

This was my third year of going to the festival and it seems to be getting busier each year. We were there on Friday evening and there was a really nice buzz. Although it was busy it never took long to get served and luckily for us we’d managed to bag a table and chairs early on. I also thought that the curries were better this year – we enjoyed a starter platter which included somosas, pakoras, chicken tikka and lamb kebab all for the bargain price of £5.

The perfect accompaniment to beer!

According to CAMRA this year there were 104 real ales from local and regional breweries, as well as 52 ciders and perrys. We went for a variety of different beers including German style, pale ale, copper bitter, porter and even a cider all from different producers but I think the favourite, of the ones we tried, was Auburn Myth from Tonbridge brewery.

Deciding which beer to chose!

The only slight negative comment this year was that the tasting notes were not as good as previous years which for a non real ale drinker it made it much harder to choose a beer. There were nearly 20 beers described as ‘pale and hoppy’ – personally I need more information to chose a good beer!

Citra hopped and pale versus copper bitter

We had a great night, bumped into friends we’d not seen for a while and found out about other real ale events taking place locally including the Slaithwaite Moonraking beer festival from 17-19 November and a Beer, Cider & Perry Festival at the Shepherd’s Boy in Dewsbury from 27 to 31 October and includes a pressing day by Udders Orchard Cider. Can’t wait!

The crowd beginning to form

Guy Fawkes afternoon tea anyone?

Cafe Nouveau At Home — Wed, 12 Oct 2011 23:04:11 +0000

Due to a confusion with dates there are now two places available at next month’s afternoon tea event. The theme is Guy Fawkes and yes you’ve guessed it, it will be taking place on Bonfire Night (well it’s the afternoon actually between 2 and 4pm.)

So if you fancy an afternoon with a difference on Saturday 5 November get in touch by email (nouveau-cakes@hotmail.com) to book your places. You’ll have the opportunity to sample some Bonfire treats in the company of 8 lovely other guests. Why not have a look at the menu page to whet your appetite!

For my international blog subscribers who may be a little confused at the references to Guy Fawkes and Bonfire Night find out more at http://www.bonfirenight.net.